


Child Of Desolation

by Valkyrien



Category: Mad Max Series (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Rictus Erectus May Buy Into The Legend Of The Shredder But The Dag Is Made Of Sterner Stuff, Spoiler Alert: It Backfires Horribly, The Dag Was The Only Wife Unafraid Of Verbal Rebellion, This Is That Rebellion And One Of The Many Ways In Which Joe Tried To Cure Her Of It
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2015-09-20
Updated: 2015-11-24
Packaged: 2018-04-22 15:31:12
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,100
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4840754
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Valkyrien/pseuds/Valkyrien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>We know that The Dag was the only one of the Wives unafraid of verbal rebellion. How did that manifest itself and how was it punished? How did Joe attempt to control this unwanted behaviour of hers?</p>
<p>Dag Knows that Words are Power, and when that Power is all she has left in this new prison she's been brought to, she is going to wield it even if it means her Death.</p>
<p>Joe wants her alive and healthy, but he also wants her compliant, and while she's unafraid and spitting mad, she's not cooperative. So Joe gets creative.</p>
<p>Another of his prisoners seems to him the perfect tool to show his newest toy just how good she has it now.</p>
<p>Dag disagrees.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Heavy Mettle - Black And Silver

 

 

 

   He is rotting, it's clear, and so she tells him - he is decaying before her eyes, he is filth and putrefaction, it's in every rattling heave of his canker-riddled carcass, and so she spits it to mock him with what he hates most, and he hates this above all things.

 

 

   However much he covets her unmarred flesh, however he desires it, he hates that she will not bite her tongue for him in fear, but the venom there is her last weapon against his putrescence and she will use it to her final breath if it must be filled with the stench of him and his cult of disease and death.

 

 

   He hates the Truth, and so he hates that she speaks it, but speak it she will, for if it is her Life he wants to own so badly he doesn't dare destroy any part of it he will suffer what lash she yet has at her command.

 

 

   Words are Power. Words are Weapons. Words are all she has left here in this prison that remain hers alone to do with as she pleases, while he does with her as he pleases, but if he is bent on infecting and defiling her she'll see him flayed for it somehow, and so she tells him.

 

 

   She tells him until he can tolerate it no longer and he beats her for it. Tries to 'break her in'.

 

 

   The Dag is not yet so mad that she does not realise he won't break her body so far that it is useless, and so what Power does he really have?

 

 

   She aches the sweeter with laughing at his impotent raging, for while her Life is something he desires he cannot take it from her, cannot damage her irreparably, or even so far that she is too long in the healing, and so what Power does he really have?

 

 

   “Nothing but a withered husk - a blight-sore,” she cackles, and what does it matter that he rages when it steals what little breath remains in his lungs?

 

 

   “Deflated - degenerating - disintegrating - ”

 

 

   He has stolen everything from her to bring her to this glass cage and now he means to steal her very essence - plant his seeds of hatred and foulness and have them nourished by her Life in hopes that some vile fruit will come of it to his glory - but Dag will not be a vessel for his ambition and she will not suffer his indignities in silence for his comfort.

 

 

   “Subpar senescent _schlanger!_ ”

 

 

   He may hate her Words, but they are the Truth, and she glories in them, in their Power to remove all the pleasure he seeks to gain from the repulsive way in which he gorges himself on her like some bloated maggot.

 

 

   “You scurvy suppurating vomitous hillock of deformity - ” she laughs, and laughs,

 

 

   “Nothing but a gruesome grotesque - a shuddering piss-curdling wretch -”

 

 

   In this place where those who scrabble in the poisoned earth below these prison walls are already half-dead and those who live within it bring Death and paint themselves in its likeness, he is still the foulest, the least-living thing she has seen here, deserves to rot to nothing and the earth that swallows the last of his poison to be prayed over and then scorched to rid it of his lingering infection.

 

 

   “Polluted parasite - ” she hisses, and his anger means nothing at all unless he chokes to his own death on it or it finally incites him beyond control to choke her to hers,

 

 

   “ _Pathetic_ \- **_monster_ ** \- ”

 

 

   The blow rattles not only her teeth but her head for once, and darkness dances within for a moment while he howls for her to be held while he rants and raves like the lunatic he mocks her for being but has had his butcher verify she is indeed not in truth -

 

 

   “ - ungrateful!” he is wheezing, spittle-strangled, and she laughs through the sting of her jaw, the pearls in her eyes, cares nothing for these lies of his that it seems he must repeat even to himself for them to sound so slickly sincere,

 

 

   “You've been Raised and Redeemed and this is how you repay me? I'll soon teach you to curb your tongue!”

 

 

   Oh, she doubts that, and she laughs until she is sick and giddy, hanging limp in the arms of the simpleton he has begotten with some other poor prisoner who came before her, and it only enrages him further but she does not care for she has never heard anything so unlikely or ridiculous - that her tongue should be curbed by anything but her own will to keep it still is the true madness at work here!

 

 

   “I think she needs to see a real monster, Rictus - she's confused,” he hisses malevolently, and the massive fool-child of his flinches and whines,

 

 

   “ _Dad, no!_ He'll eat her - she's all soft and new, that's what he likes, I heard - ”

 

 

   “Do as you're told!” he snaps, and Dag dangles loosely within the shackling clutches of his blighted spawn - strong enough to break her but handling her with restraint as far as that reaches, trembling with fear not of the repellent creature who sired him but whatever it is they are discussing which is to be her punishment, and even that makes her laugh because his hatred is now such that he would never give her into the claws of another to be ruined. He wants to be the one to break her mind so he'll never again have to worry that he might break her body to take from it what he wishes before it is complete.

 

 

   “I'm sorry,” the simpleton whimpers into her ear, winding her in white like a burial shroud,

 

 

   “I'm sorry you're getting eaten, you should've been nice!”

 

 

   The Dag can't breathe for hysterics at the very idea.

 

 

   “Let's see what a few days with a real monster does for her manners, Rictus - maybe then she'll appreciate what she's been given,” the old schlanger rattles through the apparatus that just barely lets him inflate his corroding lungs, a leer in his voice as she is bundled up with clumsy care.

 

 

   They could throw her from this terrible tower of torment and she'd scream with laughter all the way to her sticky end, but instead she is secured, shrouded, and chained, and for the first time in days borne from her prison into the wider world outside.

 

 

   She'd rather be torn apart by crows than touched by his putrid hands again in this lifetime. Whatever he has planned for her punishment that sends his simpleton son to snivelling into her hair as if she is some doll of rag and bone strung together for his childish comfort can't be worse than the sire's attempts to infect and defile her.

 

 

   And even if it is, she will relish that at least she won't have to die with his heaving wheezing rotting bloated cadaver pawing at her and sticking to her like viscid pus congealing in the glare of the Sun.

 

 

   She'd rather die feeding something than poisoned and discarded.

 

 

   His son's snot is clotting her hair against her neck, and a trickle of her own blood is hot and tingling upon her lips, and Dag thinks how wonderful it would be to be going to one's Death where there is silence and stillness and no skin remains to be violated or denied the Moon.

 

 

   There is Peace in that thought, and so she clings to it, and closes her eyes the better to feel it.

 

 

   This place is a monument to Death.

 

 

   If Death is what she must meet tonight, Dag is ready.

 

 

 


	2. He Answers Them With Death

 

 

 

   Dag is insensible of where they are taking her - these warrens of stone and sand are equal to her eyes, crawling with sad-eyed children and mad-eyed youths etched with pain of their own devising consecrated to her captor whose false-god name they chant as if it were holy. She will not even think it, it is so abhorrent to her, but there is no escaping it.

 

 

   Dag doesn't know whether to pity these creatures or pray for their collective hasty demise as fervently as it appears they do themselves.

 

 

   Her shroud prevents her from more than brief glimpses of them and her surroundings, but she hears them, and hears his hateful voice instruct someone to,

 

 

   “Prepare the Shredder,” and she supposes he is obeyed for that is what they promise him will be done and she sees nothing but zealous devotion in the eyes around her - even in the fear-crumpled face of his simple son she sees it, this unnatural fervour he inspires somehow.

 

 

   She closes her eyes against imagining what must have been done to them all for their minds to be so thoroughly enslaved by someone so cruel.

 

 

   There are some who whisper that she is dead - that she is shining, too, she hears some say, marvelling at her brightness, and she hates it only because it is this which drew his eyes also - but they are chastened harshly, she hears, violently reprimanded for this disrespectful observation of something which belongs to their master, and if Dag could move within her bonds she would call to them to look their fill if only for the sake of defiance, would shrug out of these wrappings and dare them raise their eyes again to see the evidence of their so-called god's cruelty to her, but she cannot for the sweltering hand crushing her mouth shut and the chains hidden beneath voluminous white.

 

 

   They soon disperse or are dispersed, and only his retinue remains, as their hideous host takes them deeper into this stone prison, the air changing Dag's only indicator that this is indeed where they are headed, and she thinks perhaps they are moving from one pillar to another but it is unclear for the fool carrying her plods along so awkwardly Dag can get no sense of their ascent or descent such as it may be - for one brief hopeful moment they turn a corner and she believes that they are indeed taking her to be thrown from the heights, but then -

 

 

   “Open the door,” he commands, as the simpleton sets her upon her own feet, hands clamped around her arms to discourage all thoughts of escape, and she sees that there is a metal door set into the rock face in this dimly lit corridor, that there are what appear to be guards, less bone-white skeletally painted than the lesser mind-slaves she has seen, seemingly those privileged to serve more closely than they, and the fool son whines unhappily and clenches his hands upon her more tightly, though clearly in fear rather than out of concern she will break free.

 

 

   This place reeks of unhappiness just as the lavish cell where she has been kept does, the door somehow twisted and malformed despite its sturdiness, something evil about it that sets Dag's teeth on edge, and when it is wrenched open she is not close enough to see what may lie beyond it, too many bodies in this narrow space, but she perceives that it is heavily locked - whatever resides within is imprisoned same as she.

 

 

   The idea gives her hope.

 

 

   “Your Immortan requires a service of you, Shredder,” her captor says with almost mocking imperiousness, standing in front of this dark opening in the wall, flanked by his minions, and when there is dead silence as his only reply, he orders them with clear irritation,

 

 

   “Lights and chains!”

 

 

   Whatever this means to them, they hasten to obey, rushing past the door to do his bidding, and he beckons his simple son closer and demands,

 

 

   “Rictus - free her and bring her to me!”

 

 

   She is stripped of her bonds with large shaking hands, the fool's breath escaping as tiny whimpers, and then Dag is lifted more than walked towards the outreached hand of his schlanger father.

 

 

   “You see, my ungrateful Treasure,” he rasps,

 

 

   “There are real monsters in this world that you must be protected from.”

 

 

   His whining mountain of a child is somehow both cowering behind her and holding her in an iron grip, but still he grasps her wrist with his own foul hand and tugs at her, forces her forward to look beyond the door into the gloom. His servants have brought with them a small lantern, and it is the only source of light for Dag to see by that they stand either side of a figure in ragged red, sitting splayed on a ledge, head down and covered, so still they might be a corpse, arms thickly chained to the wall.

 

 

   “My newest Wife needs teaching a lesson in fear, Shredder,” he addresses the figure, still in those contemptuous tones, as if this is some hideous jest only he derives pleasure from, and Dag supposes it is for this is also how he views his crimes against her, and again she feels a surge of hope which strikes her as almost perverse,

 

 

   “I want you to teach her.”

 

 

   The figure does not stir, says nothing, and the guards frown, one bold enough to venture,

 

 

   “Doesn' talk anymore, Immortan - won' play neither,” and Dag sees her captor's eyes narrow viciously, feels his nails score her wrist deeply before releasing her abruptly and hissing, enraged,

 

 

   “Rictus, hold her! You, hold those chains - I won't be disobeyed twice today!”

 

 

   The simple son quails behind her but his grip on Dag's arms doesn't falter, and his hated sire strides into this dreadful cell as his servants reach for the figure's chains and hold them fast, jerking red-clad arms with the motion, and Dag sees what must be limp white hands at the end of long wound-strip sleeves before her captor comes to stand before this lifeless being and taunts,

 

 

   “You ignore your Immortan, you wretched thing? Safe behind your mask?”

 

 

   It is a mask the figure wears, Dag sees, and in one harsh movement he tears it away and steps back holding it almost in triumph, a malice in his bearing that is repugnant to her, but as he does it he sneers,

 

 

   “Maybe I should burn it!”

 

 

   The figure lurches forward as the mask is removed and Dag is certain that it will topple to the ground, that there is no life left in it after all, but instead of doing so it lunges for her captor with an inhuman, continuous scream, clawing the air with bloody hands, and Dag cannot hold back her own cry at the sight.

 

 

   There are daggers in men's smiles, Dag knows, but this is no man, nor is it a monster such as was promised for her punishment - this is an animated corpse, something beyond the would-be's painted skeletal and yet well-padded with life that inhabit this vile necropolis.

 

 

   Dag is afraid because it is what she fears in this place above all else; death without the mercy of dying. An empty, agonised existence, drained of life but denied the peace of death itself.

 

 

   The flickering light of the lantern wreathes the shrieking creature in grotesque shadows and highlights, but underneath the horror is real.

 

 

   It is eyeless - there is nothing but darkened hollows where eyes ought be - and its bleeding mouth is studded haphazardly with bone-shard teeth.

 

 

   It is a howling nightmare of death and despair made flesh, and Dag is afraid.

 

 

   It seems to amuse her captor, both its fury and her fright, for he laughs, and then jeers,

 

 

   “You see, my Treasure? What I have been keeping you safe from? Will you obey me now or should I leave you here, with a real monster?”

 

 

   It is difficult to discern his rattling wheeze of a voice, for the creature's is more powerful by far and reverberates around the confined space until Dag's ears ring, and she finds she cannot look away from it, transfixed and petrified, understanding now the trembling of the simple son still holding her in place.

 

 

   Those hands, reaching for the mask or her captor's throat, she doesn't know, they are as bloody as that horrible, rent mouth, and...

 

 

   There are Words within the screams, she realises too late in her fear - this is no mindless savagery of sound, this is censure and loathing, these are accusations and righteous wrath, an agony of hatred -

 

 

   “Misbegotten base deceiver! _Murderer!_ ”

 

 

   Dag's desecrator laughs and this thing he calls monster screeches and rages and she hears herself in it.

 

 

   “She is mine - _mine - !_ ”

 

 

   Dag flinches, but the suppurating old schlanger glares at the creature and spits,

 

 

   “You belong to me - I Raised you and I can cast you out or leave you here to rot!”

 

 

   His words are drowned in hate filled howling, and Dag feels them strike at something within her, some resonating part deadened until now.

 

 

   “Weak-willed tyrant - thief of days! _Murderer_ \- _defiler_ \- festering _coward_ \- ”

 

 

   Her captor whirls on her and grabs her wrist once more, and she finds that she cannot look at him, gaze averted not out of fear of him, but a depraved and pervasive fascination with this hideous apparition.

 

 

   The bite of nails upon her skin seems almost distant, but her unwavering, repelled fixation upon this raging revenant will not be diverted, and this more than anything seems to enflame the reeking old bastard for he shakes her until she glances at him, more because he pulled her than because she chose to, and he snarls in threat,

 

 

   “I can leave you here in the dark with a monster or Raise you to the light as my own - you're mine now either way. So choose.”

 

 

   The bleeding thing howls on, its guards dragging it back by chained wrists, and Dag's eyes slide inexorably to it, to the fresh dark stains there, to the dripping mouth, the Words on those torn lips -

 

 

   She has none of her own, so hers do not move.

 

 

   “Fine,” her captor growls,

 

 

   “Rictus, stop snivelling and let her go! She can stay here until she learns her place!”

 

 

   The fool child releases her at once, and she stumbles, dragged forward by the cruel hand digging into her arm, falls to her knees hard, and above her she hears the rotting schlanger bark at the guards,

 

 

   “Unchain him and remove the light!” and she tries to scramble to her feet but the shroud still tangled about her body hinders her, and the lantern is doused and chains fall heavily to the stone floor as her captor and his son move towards the door, their servants restraining the screaming creature she is to be confined with, and Dag finds herself paralyzed with terror.

 

 

   “Teach her well, my little Shredder, and perhaps I won't burn Her after all,” the vile blighted smeg-sucker laughs, and then sneers at her,

 

 

   “You'll learn who you belong to soon enough, my ungrateful Treasure. You'll learn.”

 

 

   His guards fling the creature to the ground and then rush quickly past her prone form and to the door, and it is shut and barred audibly before Dag can move to it herself, the clang of metal final and echoing discordantly within now-total darkness around the eerie ringing shriek of the Shredder, and it mingles with Dag's own cry of,

 

 

   “No!”

 

 

   Her nails scrape squealing against rust.  

 

 

   Behind her, Death breathes.

 

 

 


	3. Look Into The Eyes Of Death

 

 

 

   “Full of vexation he comes with complaint against her...”

 

 

   Dag shrinks further against the rough metal of the door at the sound, the Words hoarse and weary and insufficiently far from her to let her feel safe, and she cannot quite like the note of defeat behind them or the curiosity that tinges those spoken next.

 

 

   “With compelling demands that I should inspire further fear than he himself... Taking from me the dearest thing I have left, and leaving me with a Slave he calls Wife... So who am I to share the dark with, here where honesty and honour are caged? For whose torment are my memories held to ransom?”

 

 

   Dag doesn't think the questions are posed to her directly for all they are clearly directed at her, nor does she entirely understand their meaning, and she is no longer so certain that preserving the integrity of her flesh weighs more heavily than her captor's desire to punish her disobedience and so she does not trust that he has given her to a creature that will not in fact harm her beyond what can be repaired if provoked.

 

 

   She doesn't know what to say, her tongue thick and useless behind her clenched teeth, and so she closes her eyes tightly and sends a prayer before her to smooth her path, and remembers,

 

 

   “You seem to hate him just as well as I do - the old schlanger,” and it is small and frightened and broken with it but at least it is sure-sounding in this, and so she pleads for the first time since she was brought here,

 

 

   “So spit in his face and leave me be, please.”

 

 

   Whatever time passes or has passed already is without meaning, trickling by in the dark devoid of effect, but still Dag is afire with every breath she swallows through the terror, her throat tight with the need to scream, tears forcing their way to her face to burn there until they cool and stiffen into a mask of tragedy.

 

 

   “There are no gentle visitors in this place,” comes the reply, ragged with the fatigue that follows rage but softly shaped beyond what she would have thought such horror capable of,

 

 

   “Nothing but prisoners here. You are already afraid.”

 

 

   Dag's hands flutter beseechingly although she knows no one is heeding them, no one is listening but this malformed cellmate meant to coerce her into submission through fear, and although she hears neither madness nor malice in the voice that drifts towards her through the darkness, she sees that screaming, bleeding thing in her mind's eye still and nothing even with her tear-blurred eyes straining wide for anything but black, and can't but admit,

 

 

   “I am. Your looks I fear just as he intended, and your intent I doubt - you tell me yourself, he compels you to torment me.”

 

 

   “I am more sinned against than sinning,” the creature whispers, distant but somehow harsh and bitter,

 

 

   “Speaking daggers but using none...”

 

 

   She doesn't know if she can trust it, the terror of total darkness and knowing the face which produces this voice is not so easy to overcome, and so she remains where she is and dreads the sound of motion.

 

 

   There is only silent stillness.

 

 

   She can hear this being breathe, gentle and controlled where her own is anything other, but nothing more than that.

 

 

   This, too, she distrusts.

 

 

   “Are you to be the death of me?” she whispers into the dark, wishing it were not so hopeful as she hears it sound, afraid and yet yearning, and she strains to catch any answer so that she might be prepared although this voice in the void has been clear to her until now.

 

 

   It is clear again and ripe with sorrow and the echo of her own twisted desire when it comes to her, low but definite,

 

 

   “No, but hopefully you will be mine.”

 

 

   “The miserable have no medicine but hope,” she whispers, desperate for common ground to tread, and she thinks she hears a hopeless laugh somewhere in the dry, sighing voice when it says,

 

 

   “Not even that - not here. Of all the basest passions fear is the most accursed, and how it thrives in the absence of hope. You've felt it. You know.”

 

 

   “I will not be afraid of him,” she spits, incensed and shaking now with a rage so deep it feels very like the sickness of fear, and then the chill of apprehension grips her inner workings, for she will not be afraid of her captor, but she is afraid of this, her fellow captive.

 

 

   She is afraid, and there is somehow shame to be found in that - that she will reject fear of her defiler in favour of rage but cannot reject the terror this creature who is not even close enough to touch her and has made no move to do so inspires beneath her skin.

 

 

   “Only true nobility is exempt from fear,” comes the quiet reply, and she shies from it and then realises - it is both a compliment to her and an acknowledgment of her fortitude, and so also a compliment, and she can't but treasure these as the first kind words she has been given in a very long time, the first that have come to her here, but she won't succumb to that far enough to let down her guard.

 

 

   She won't believe that anything good can resist the suffocating filth that permeates the very walls of this stronghold of sorrows.

 

 

   “This place may be a monument to Death, but I will not be afraid of that, either,” she insists, unsure of why except that it needs saying, that she won't be broken even by the threat of the end,

 

 

   “Death is necessary. It comes when it comes, and I'd rather meet it the sooner, here.”

 

 

   “Then you will meet it for the first and last time when it does come,” is the soft response to her vow, carrying with it a note of appraisal before it hardens,

 

 

   “But not by my hand.”

 

 

   “Why not?” she has demanded, impassioned, before she has weighed it against the risk, her anger welling within her afresh, goading,

 

 

   “Because you were ordered only to frighten me? If you truly want to spite him, you'll strike a blow for us both - end me and it can only bring on your own Death! He'll kill you for it, there's no doubt - we'd both be free of his foul use!”

 

 

   Her Words are desperate, the provocations tinged with falseness because they are rooted in the very last of her hope that there may be some escape from her fate, and she understands once they are spoken that she does not truly believe that it will work, that any deliverance remains to her, even the succour of Death itself.

 

 

   “I am made an instrument of fear by his hand - it is not my true purpose and I will not sully the memories he has stolen from me to force my own hand against a fellow prisoner by bowing to his demands,” the determined, offended voice declares, lending strength to her hopelessness until it is absolute, confirming her worst fear,

 

 

   “My own instrument he may turn to War in my hands and my Name he may twist into a byword for Pain and Death, but I am none of those things and I will commit no according acts for his demented pleasure! I will not be what he seeks to make me!”

 

 

   The last is raised in anger, though not at her, some dim part of her Knows, and not so far as the howling fury of earlier - it is instead almost an echo of her own wretched despair, and it prompts a wail of misery from deep within her breast, piteous and wrathful, her hands curling into tight fists against the metal of the door and her eyes streaming with the poison of her anguish.

 

 

   “But I will - I will be a slave - ” she sobs, raw and desolate, her voice scraping her throat as it is expelled,

 

 

   “There will be no Life - I'd rather true Death than what he'll do to me - kept from the Stars - contaminated with his filth - broken up for scrap - I'll wither in that Moonless cage, I can't go back - please - _please_ kill me - ”

 

 

   It overwhelms her like a sudden storm sweeping in unnoticed before the sky is riven with it, dragging her down through the Deeps of herself until she feels her strength so depleted it is like bleeding from this life without the release of dying, until she is less than her own shade, weak and prostrate with the grief that her anger has held at bay thus far.

 

 

   This is the storm of her mourning, these are the tears she did not shed as her existence was torn away, as her future was murdered before her very eyes and all she's ever loved or owned was stripped from her just as her life was. This is the death of her defiance - her defeat come at last where hope is utterly spent, and it shatters her resolve.

 

 

   That she has come to this, ignobly begging for Death to make one last choice for herself before the last of her freedom is irrecoverably stolen...

 

 

   “I will not,” the creature's voice pierces her desolation, gentler than anything she has felt in this place,

 

 

   “I will take nothing from you - least of all your Life.”

 

 

   “I don't want it - ” she heaves a great breath, fiery and cruel, the shame searing her tongue,

 

 

   “Everything is lost - my path is gone - I don't want to die a shadow of myself... Please, if you hate him at all, if he has ever stolen part of you, please - kill me before he does. It's not the Dying I fear - it's fading to nothing first. _Please..._ ”

 

 

   Her face feels almost blood-hot, her tainted flesh abhorrent to her, and her begging is a ragged whisper that draws an equally ragged breath from her fellow prisoner.

 

 

   “He stole everything from me...” is the reply, cracked and destroyed,

 

 

   “And seeks to ruin what's left. I do understand - I Know the pain in your voice, his venom - I have felt it now longer than I ever had to feel what came Before I was taken. I Know...”

 

 

   “Then deliver us both!” she implores wretchedly,

 

 

   “If you Know - if you've felt this - kill me, and he'll have your head - we'll both be free - ”

 

 

   “I'll have none of Death until I hear he's drawn his last vile breath,” the creature swears, fierce and resolute, and it is a shock, rekindling the embers of her own resistance, the revelation of this idea -

 

 

   “Women may fall where there's no strength in men, but where men fight wars, women win them, and his war is a paltry thing barely worthy of the name - you'll see him ground into the earth yet, and if you still long for Death after, I will give it to you gladly and embrace my own singing, but I will cling to Life while he does. I will be there when he falls!”

 

 

   It is as passionate, as purely fixed as her own hatred of their captor, their tormentor, and to hear it spoken aloud, to hear the Words -

 

 

   They are a gift greater than a Death of her own choosing.

 

 

 


End file.
